Author: AFP

Paris (AFP) – The population of almost every country will be shrinking by the end of the century, a major study said Wednesday, warning that baby booms in developing nations and busts in rich ones will drive massive social change.

The fertility rate in half of all nations is already too low to maintain their population size, an international team of hundreds of researchers reported in The Lancet.

Using a huge amount of global data on births, deaths and what drives fertility, the researchers tried to forecast the future for the world’s population.

By 2050, the population of three quarters of all countries will be shrinking, according to the study by the US-based Institute For Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).

At the end of the century, that will be true for 97 percent — or 198 out of 204 countries and territories, the researchers projected.

Only Samoa, Somalia, Tonga, Niger, Chad and Tajikistan are expected to have fertility rates exceeding the replacement level of 2.1 births per female in 2100, the study estimated.

During this century, fertility rates will continue to increase in developing countries, particularly those in sub-Saharan Africa, even as they tumble in wealthier, ageing nations.

“The world will be simultaneously tackling a ‘baby boom’ in some countries and a ‘baby bust’ in others,” senior study author Stein Emil Vollset of the IHME said in a statement.

‘Implications are immense’

“We are facing staggering social change through the 21st century,” he said in a statement.

IHME researcher Natalia Bhattacharjee said the “implications are immense”.

“These future trends in fertility rates and live births will completely reconfigure the global economy and the international balance of power and will necessitate reorganising societies,” she said.

“Once nearly every country’s population is shrinking, reliance on open immigration will become necessary to sustain economic growth.”

However World Health Organization experts urged caution for the projections.

They pointed out several limitations of the models, particularly a lack of data from many developing nations.

Communication about the figures “should not be sensationalised, but nuanced, balancing between gloom and optimism,” the WHO experts wrote in The Lancet.

They also pointed out that there can be benefits of having a smaller population, such as for the environment and food security. But there are disadvantages for labour supply, social security and “nationalistic geopolitics”.

Teresa Castro Martin, a researcher at the Spanish National Research Council not involved in the study, also emphasised that these are just projections.

She pointed out that the Lancet study predicts the global fertility rate will fall below replacement levels around 2030, “whereas the UN predicts this to occur around 2050”.

The study was an update of the IHME’s Global Burden of Disease study. The organisation, set up at the University of Washington by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has become a global reference for health statistics.

Global temperatures “smashed” heat records last year, as heatwaves stalked oceans and glaciers suffered record ice loss, the United Nations said Tuesday — warning 2024 was likely to be even hotter.

The annual State of the Climate report by the UN weather and climate agency confirmed preliminary data showing 2023 was by far the hottest year ever recorded.

And last year capped off “the warmest 10-year period on record”, the World Meteorological Organization said, with even hotter temperatures expected.

“There is a high probability that 2024 will again break the record of 2023”, WMO climate monitoring chief Omar Baddour told reporters.

Reacting to the report, UN chief Antonio Guterres said it showed “a planet on the brink”.

“Earth’s issuing a distress call,” he said in a video message, pointing out that “fossil fuel pollution is sending climate chaos off the charts”, and warning that “changes are speeding up”.

The WMO said that last year the average near-surface temperature was 1.45 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels — dangerously close to the critical 1.5-degree threshold that countries agreed to avoid passing in the 2015 Paris climate accords.

“I am now sounding the red alert about the state of the climate,” Saulo told reporters, lamenting that “2023 set new records for every single climate indicator”.

The organisation said many of the records were “smashed” and that the numbers “gave ominous new significance to the phrase ‘off the charts’.”

“What we witnessed in 2023, especially with the unprecedented ocean warmth, glacier retreat and Antarctic sea ice loss, is cause for particular concern,” Saulo said.

One especially worrying finding was that marine heatwaves gripped nearly a third of the global ocean on an average day last year.

And by the end of 2023, more than 90 percent of the ocean had experienced heatwave conditions at some point during the year, the WMO said.